My main platform is YT, so it’s not usually a problem, because on YT I have only one cover art as option: YouTube Preview (as here for instance). But sometimes I need to add releases from other platforms too, and here I have this issue already. Should I add a cover art for every platform separately, or I need to prefer only the version with the highest resolution? I haven’t seen any information about that in “Cover art docs”.
They’re all the same, why adding them all?
One is enough, and the choice is up to you, for which size you’d like to upload.
Personally, I would pick a reasonable size, like 1200 px, maximum.
In your 3 front cover uploads, I would keep Spotify and cancel the 2 others, that look the same but are three times bigger in file size:
Dimensions: 2000x2000
910.47 kB, JPEG
Types: Front
Spotify
In my opinion, they’re on different platforms, so it can be preferred to save cover art for every platform separately, because artworks can be different on musical streaming services or changed after some time (as on YT as far as I understand it). But it’s not something critical for me. I can add all of them or only one with the highest or other resolution and add other cover arts only if they are different.
I just want to know what is the basic/correct way to do that here on MB
Most digital cover art is reused amongst platforms. The art that appears on Spotify and Apple Music, for example, is very often the exact same, just at different sizes. Uploading many different copies of the same image will just result in unnecessary bloat - why make both a 1000*1000px file and a 3000*3000px file available, when anyone could just grab the bigger file and downsize if they so choose? In fact, MB provides resized options already:
If a release has a different cover on one platform vs. another, that means it should be a separate release in MB, so there’s no need to add multiple covers to the same release in that case either.
If you’re working with digital releases a lot, you might be interested in trying some userscripts: MB: Enhanced Cover Art Uploads is one of the most popular ones, for good reason
«Different cover art. Any differences beyond size/quality changes and minor color differences justify multiple releases.»
I didn’t know about this part, thanks! OK, so the final solution is to add only one cover art with the highest resolution, right?
Can I ask what about cases, when an art cover of some release was changed after its first release?
I’m not sure about audio streaming services, but on YT creators sometimes change YouTube previews for their videos. For instance, this is the current art cover of this video:
Guidelines for music videos are still being worked on, so I can’t really give a real answer. YouTube is tricky because thumbnails can be changed for any number of reasons, sometimes there’s a legitimate issue, like correcting a mistake or to update the thumbnail with new info, and sometimes it’s done just to bring more views to old videos, the YouTube algorithm is tricky @UltimateRiff might have more knowledge in this field, but me personally I would treat an “old thumbnail” release as withdrawn and replaced with the “new thumbnail” version. But again, not sure if we’re to treat music videos in the same we do regular releases.
if you know the YouTube thumbnail was changed, you can create two releases for the video as mentioned above, since that is an artwork change too. reuse the same recording too, unless they changed the video too (like this release of Take On Me), and the release date should be the date of the change (if known. if not known, leave it blank)
I’d personally put the music videos in their own release group, but there’s no guidelines for that as of yet (it’s a part of the discussion @afrocat mentioned above)
I wonder if there’s a way for us to see when this is done tho… could be useful for that cover art userscript and whatnot
that said, I could be convinced that this in particular could maybe be an exception to the release-splitting rule, but we do split physical releases which are practically identical (same barcode, catalog number, disc ID, etc.) save for the cover art, like Two Lefts here
One of the issues with YouTube is the artwork and title can be changed without actually withdrawing the release. It is done to help game “the algorithm”.
If a video is taken down and uploaded fresh with new artwork, that seems withdrawn. But if they just keep changing the artwork, that seems more like just adding extra art to the same release to me. The release date has stayed static.